8 May, 2023 15:46

US can’t explain what happened to Nord Stream – Russia

Moscow expects no new insight from Washington regarding the blasts that crippled key gas pipelines, a high-ranking diplomat says

Washington hasn’t responded to Moscow’s demand for an explanation of what happened to the Nord Stream pipelines after veteran journalist Seymour Hersh published a bombshell report blaming the US for destroying the key gas route, high-ranking Russian diplomat Konstantin Gavrilov has said.

“We haven’t received any clarification yet and it’s unlikely that we’ll ever get any,” he told Izvestia newspaper on Monday. “There’ll be nothing new [from the US],” added the official, who heads Russia’s delegation at the Vienna talks on military security and arms control.

Gavrilov said he was surprised by the behavior of the EU nations that were most affected by the sabotage of crucial energy infrastructure, which was built to deliver Russian gas to Europe through Germany.

Germany, Sweden and Denmark, which have been carrying out probes into the explosions on Nord Stream 1 and 2 last fall, have so far been reluctant to open up about their findings. They also rejected offers from Russia to assist with the investigations.

“The stance of Europe, which is being openly humiliated, is something that I can’t fully understand,” Gavrilov said.

In early February, Hersh authored a report claiming that US President Joe Biden had given the order to destroy Nord Stream. According to an informed source who talked to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, the explosives that were detonated last September had been planted at the pipelines in the Baltic Sea back in June 2022 by US Navy divers under the cover of a NATO exercise.

Hersh later suggested that Biden had chosen that very moment to blow up the infrastructure because theconflict between Russia and Ukraine “wasn’t going great” for Kiev and its backers in Washington.

US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson denied the report, calling it “utterly false and complete fiction.”

In late March, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he “fully agreed” with Hersh’s findings that the Nord Stream sabotage had been organized by the American Special Forces.

Other Russian officials have also noted that the only party to benefit from the destruction of Nord Stream was the US, which has seen supplies of its more expensive liquefied natural gas to Europe increase massively since the blasts.

https://www.rt.com/russia/575965-nord-stream-us-hersh/

8 May, 2023 16:27

Ukraine cancels traditional holiday celebrating defeat of Nazis

The Russian Foreign Ministry has called President Vladimir Zelensky a “traitor” for proposing to shift Victory Day to May 8

Ukraine may break the Soviet tradition of celebrating Victory Day on May 9 after President Vladimir Zelensky suggested holding commemorative ceremonies on May 8 instead. The idea was quickly slammed by officials in Moscow.

In a message on his Telegram channel on Monday, Zelensky explained that his proposal was based on the fact that it was “on May 8 that most nations of the world remember the greatness of the victory over the Nazis.” He added that the German Third Reich’s unconditional surrender was signed on that day.

Zelensky said he had submitted a bill to the country’s parliament which, if passed, would officially designate May 8 as the ‘Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism in the Second World War of 1939-1945’.

As for May 9, which is when Victory Day was traditionally celebrated in the Soviet Union, Zelensky declared this would now be observed as Europe Day, as it is in the European Union. He expressed confidence that the changes would help align Ukraine with Europe and return to “honest history without ideological admixtures to our state.”

According to the proposed bill, May 9 would cease to be a public holiday, while May 8 would become one.

The Ukrainian President also compared modern day Russia to Nazi Germany, saying it represented a “similar evil” and insisting Ukraine would prevail in its conflict against Moscow in the end.

Lawmakers in the Verkhovna Rada have already indicated their readiness to quickly adopt the new piece of legislation promptly. The head of the ruling party’s parliamentary group, David Arakhamia, wrote on his Telegram channel on Monday that he and his colleagues would begin working to “speedily adopt” the bill.

The move has been condemned in Russia, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova branding Zelensky a “traitor” and the “new incarnation of Judas in the 21st century.”

In a post on her Telegram channel, the official argued that the Ukrainian president had “forever betrayed his ancestors,” who fought against the Nazis. “Fascist collaborator 80 years later,” she concluded.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, said he believed May 9 would remain a sacred day for many Ukrainians no matter what.

https://www.rt.com/russia/575967-ukraine-zelensky-victory-day-may8/

8 May, 2023 16:30

Russian rainy day fund growing – Finance Ministry

The emergency reserve will soon hold only gold, Chinese yuan, and the ruble, as Moscow reduces its exposure to currencies of ‘unfriendly’ nations

The volume of Russia’s National Wealth Fund (NWF) rose by 570 billion rubles ($7.3 billion) in April to nearly $155 billion, the Ministry of Finance reported on Friday.

The NWF, which accumulates revenue from oil exports, was created to support the national pension system and to help cover budget deficits when needed.

According to the ministry, as of May 1 the size of the fund was equivalent to 8.3% of Russia’s projected gross domestic product for 2023. At the same time, the amount of liquid assets in the rainy day fund stood at $84 billion, which equals 4.6% of projected GDP.

Data showed that last month the ministry sold 4.25 billion yuan and6.4 tons of gold worth 83 billion rubles (over $1 billion)to finance the budget deficit.

The Chinese currency is currently viewed as the main asset Russia can use for transactions to refill its national wealth fund. Earlier this year, the ministry published a new regulatory structure for NWF assets, which excludes US dollars and establishes flexible shares of other assets.

Under the new terms, the maximum share of the yuan and gold in the NWF has been doubled to 60% and 40% respectively. Meanwhile, balances in the British pound and the Japanese yen have been reduced to zero. Deputy Finance Minister Vladimir Kolychev previously said that the share of the euro in the NWF will also be reduced to zero in 2023, as Moscow decreases its exposure to the currencies of ‘unfriendly’ nations.

(Bannon has been saying for months that central banks and countries have been buying a shit ton of gold and silver,this article is not about the yuan but about the gold they have amassed).

https://www.rt.com/business/575855-russia-wealth-fund-growth/

>>18816460

good catch

8 May, 2023 15:371/2

The West risks creating a ‘Snow ISIS’ in Europe with extremists going to fight in Ukraine

A neo-Nazi terrorist threat could emerge from the fog of war as radicals return from the frontlines

A new assassination attempt shook Russia last week, targeting a prominent civilian figure — this time, writer Zakhar Prilepin, whose car was blown up in Nizhny Novgorod region.

The hit, which Prilepin survived, is reminiscent of the incident that killed political scientist and activist Darya Dugina last year near Moscow, and also the bombing that targeted military blogger Vladlen Tartarsky and leveled a Saint Petersburg café. These attacks are similar to those routinely condemned by the West when they’re committed by jihadists. But Western officials’ clear lack of interest in identifying or denouncing the perpetrators of these incidents speaks volumes.

And speaking of sabotage, who’s responsible for launching the drone that blew up over the Kremlin last week? The shrug from Washington is deafening. Classified US documents leaked online last month already fingered Ukrainian agents who “pursued drone attacks inside Belarus and Russia, contrary to US and Western wishes, and leaders in Kyiv have considered further targets outside Ukraine,” according to NBC News. Yet when asked about the incident by the Washington Post, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the incident should be taken with “a very large shaker of salt” – as though US officials weren’t already fully aware of the general intention to pursue precisely such attacks. But Western officials constantly play on plausible deniability. What enables them to do so is their insistence on distinguishing between Ukraine the country, on one hand, and pro-Ukrainian agents and groups on the other.

There sure is a lot of sabotage against Russia happening right now. Some is attributed to Ukraine directly, as France’s Le Monde did recently in the wake of the bombing of a train in Bryansk. Other acts, like the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline network – a centerpiece of Russian-European economic cooperation – have been described by US officials as being perpetrated by undefined “pro-Ukrainian” groups.

Any distinction is really just a minor detail considering that NATO allies can’t even be bothered to make it themselves when it might suit them.They knowingly trained Azov battalion neo-Nazis, as Canada’s Ottawa Citizen and other Western media have documented. Those soldiers had ultimately been folded into the Ukrainian army and their background was conveniently whitewashed.

The security threat that the US and its allies are fomenting in Europe is reminiscent of their actions in Syria. They trained and equipped “moderate” Syrian rebels in a failed attempt to overthrow President Bashar Assad, and many of these fighters ended up joining al-Qaeda.

Furthermore, Western-supplied weapons ultimately ended up in the hands of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and al-Nusra. A resounding success for a counter-terrorism operation.

(Good point who wants these fighters back in their countries, or left to their own devices?)

https://www.rt.com/news/575844-snow-isis-terrorist-europe-ukraine/